Frequently Asked Questions

Acordle is a mobile chord game inspired by the world of guitar. You place your fingers on a virtual fretboard, strum with your finger, and hear how each string sounds with the real sound that chord would produce.

The experience is designed as a fast, replayable challenge with scoring, streaks, lives, leaderboards, and a real musical foundation underneath.

Anyone can enjoy it, though people with a curiosity about music and guitar will probably enjoy it the most. It can also be appealing for players who already know some chords and want to revisit them, practise them, or explore progressions in a different way.

Remembering chords is a very important part of playing guitar, but you will need more than that: fretting technique, strumming technique, rhythm, picking, and practice on a real instrument.

Acordle is not a guitar course, has no guided exercises, and does not replace a teacher. It is designed as a game, but it is built on real chords and real musical logic. If you ever pick up a real guitar, some of what you have seen or practised here may feel familiar.

It can also be a useful way to fill small gaps in the day while still doing something musical: waiting for someone, sitting on public transport, or taking a short break while reviewing real chord names and shapes.

Think of it as a memory game. During each session, chords appear at the top of the screen. The first time you see a chord, you replicate its diagram on the fretboard. Once you have played and strummed it correctly, the next time it appears you only see the chord name.

1. Place your fingers in the correct fretboard positions for the chord that appears.
2. Strum the strings by swiping across the bottom of the screen, making sure you do not miss any strings or strum extra ones.
3. Acordle instantly tells you whether you got it right or wrong. If you made a mistake, it highlights the positions or strings you should not have played and the ones you missed.
4. If you make a mistake or time runs out before you complete the strum, you lose a life. Three strikes and the game is over.
5. If you play all the chords in the level correctly without the diagram, you complete the level and unlock the next one.

The faster you are, the more points you earn. Consecutive correct answers build a streak that awards bonus points.

• Beginner: the first chords people typically learn when picking up the guitar.
• Intermediate: barre chords and more complex shapes.
• Advanced: chords grouped by key; you need to complete three rounds to finish the level.

Every week, Acordle features a free challenge built around a curated chord progression. First you study the chords, then you play them back from memory, with no diagrams on screen.

You have up to three attempts (with four passes each) to complete the challenge. You can play each attempt in Normal or Expert mode. In Normal mode, you see the name of the chord you need to play. Expert mode is the real challenge: instead of chord names you only see each chord's harmonic degree in the key (Roman numerals such as I, vi, or V7), so you must also remember the chord order. Expert is the only mode that awards gold, silver, or bronze medals depending on the attempt, and finishing it on your first pass with no help earns a PERFECT.

When you complete it, Acordle reveals a short note about the progression and plays its own arrangement back to you. Choose Practice and the app can also demonstrate that arrangement on the Free Practice fretboard, highlighting chord shapes, plucks, and strumming direction before you try it yourself. A new challenge arrives every week, and you can revisit your past challenges and stats in the app.

The weekly challenge is free, but it requires signing in. Once completed, you can share a verified, Wordle-style result grid.

Yes. You can enable it in Settings. By default, the app is in portrait mode, but many players find the landscape layout more comfortable because it is closer to the natural position of a guitar fretboard.

You can also choose Auto so that the markers and fretboard rotate based on device orientation, although a fixed orientation is usually more stable.

Landscape mode places the fretboard in the same position a real guitar sits in when you hold it: the view you get when you look down at your own instrument. The portrait view is a diagram, easy to read at a glance; the landscape one looks like the guitar.

The point is to make what you learn here easier to carry over to the real thing. If you memorise a shape while looking at the screen in that position, you will recognise it on an actual fretboard without having to translate it in your head.

When Acordle plays a progression for you, the presentation turns to face whoever is in front of the phone. It is meant for you to prop the phone up ahead of you, like a music stand, pick up your guitar, and follow the progression on the instrument, laid out the way you are used to seeing it in a tutorial.

The phone does not move, and neither do the fretboard or the strings. Only the parts you read turn around, such as the chord name, the finger numbers, and the marks over strings that stay silent, so they remain legible from that position. The chords in the sequence also flip their on-screen order, so they still read from first to last.

This playback can start on its own the first time you open a progression. When it finishes, or if you stop it, everything returns to your usual view. None of this happens in portrait.

They are the real fingering for the chord: 1 = index, 2 = middle, 3 = ring, and 4 = pinky. It is the same notation you would find in a chord book.

They do not affect your score or any other aspect of the game. They appear briefly as extra information for guitarists and curious players who want to know the fingering used on a real guitar.

They are different ways of naming the same chords. Acordle lets you choose the notation that feels most familiar to you.

For example, the same note can appear as B or Si depending on the selected system.

This only changes how chord names and keys are displayed in the app. It does not change the sound, fingering, or game rules. The setting is independent from the app language.

No. You can play and complete the entire scored game, across all three difficulty levels, without creating an account.

That said, we recommend signing up. With an account you get cloud sync, leaderboards, stats on your progress, the weekly challenge, access to Free Practice, and fewer ads.

Creating an account is free. Acordle is committed to minimal personal data storage: there are no custom passwords and your email is not stored in plain text in the database.

Notifications are optional and stay off until you turn them on. If you enable them, Acordle can let you know when the monthly ranking is about to close, when its results are in, and when a new weekly challenge is available. You can switch them on or off at any time from Settings.

If you ever change your mind, you can delete your account from the app settings or through the account deletion page.

Leaderboards open up once you sign in, and they are kept separately for each difficulty level, so you always compete against players on the same level.

• Live: the ranking for the period in progress, available monthly, yearly, and all-time. It updates as you play, and the monthly and yearly boards show how much time is left before the period closes.
• Final: when a month or a year closes, its ranking is frozen and kept as a historical record you can browse later.

In both cases you see the top positions plus your own position with the players immediately around you. Final ranking entries are also the ones you can turn into a public shared link.

Yes. If you are signed in, you can create verified public links for eligible games, final ranking entries, and completed weekly challenges. These pages show a summary of the result, such as nickname, score, level, duration, ranking position, or your weekly challenge result grid.

Shared-result links are public. Anyone with the link can view them, and if the link is posted on a public website, social network, or forum, search engines and other crawlers may discover and index the shared page.

Yes. You can reactivate them from the app Settings. If the toggle shows OFF, you have already seen all tutorials available for your current level. If it shows ON, you still have some left to see.

You can force them all to show again by switching from OFF to ON. They will reappear when you enter the corresponding level or Free Practice.

Free Practice is a space to play without pressure. There is no timer, no score, and no lives: you can try chords at your own pace, hear how they sound, and explore different shapes.

Unlike the main mode, it is not about beating a session. You can draw chord shapes on the fretboard, strum or pluck string by string, see which chord the app recognises, and move within a key to explore related progressions.

Completed Weekly Acordle challenges can open here with guided playback, so you can watch and hear the published progression on the fretboard before replaying it at your own pace. Completing the current weekly challenge also grants one extra practice session that week.

In that sense, it also works like a reverse chord dictionary: instead of searching for a chord name to see its shape, you try a shape and Acordle tells you which chord it recognises.

When you place your fingers and strum, Acordle identifies in real time which chord you are forming. If the position does not match any known chord, you see a question mark. Some chords display ALT, which means it is a common alternative fingering for that same chord.

Free Practice is included without limits in the Full Version. Without it, you can still enter with a free timed session: the first one lasts longer, and after each session there is a waiting period before the next one becomes available.

As a Full Version feature, Free Practice needs to be linked to your account in order to offer the free trial sessions.

Being signed in also allows Acordle to restore the key and chord list you were practising with last time, so you can pick up where you left off.

Ads are what keep the scored game, the weekly challenge, cloud sync, and leaderboards free for everyone. Acordle asks for your consent before requesting any ad, and the app is built to keep interruptions low rather than to maximise them.

• Your first three scored games on a new installation are completely ad-free.
• The first game after unlocking Intermediate or Advanced is ad-free as well.
• There is always a minimum gap between two ads, plus a daily limit, so a long session never fills up with them.

Signing in reduces how often ads appear by at least 20%, and it costs nothing. A free account is the easiest way to play with fewer interruptions.

The Full Version removes every ad from the app.

The Full Version is a one-time purchase. It is not a subscription and there are no renewals.

• Unlimited Free Practice: no time limits or cooldown periods.
• No ads: ads are removed from the app.
• Advanced statistics: the full stats tab, on top of the basic one.

Basic statistics are available to every signed-in player: games played, accuracy, response times, mastered chords and keys, best ranking positions, and a weekly challenge card with your completions, streaks, and medals.

Advanced statistics add score progression over time, how your chord mastery has evolved, a breakdown of your recent games, and an error analysis of the mistakes you make without diagrams, including the chord that trips you up the most.

If you change phones, you can restore your Full Version on the new device using Restore purchases.

The main game can work offline, whether you play without an account or while signed in. If you are signed in, games are saved locally and sync automatically once you are back online.

The features that require an internet connection are signing in, purchases, leaderboards, shared-result links, the weekly challenge, and Free Practice.

If you are signed in, your progress syncs automatically to the cloud. When you sign in on your new device, everything is restored.

If you already bought the Full Version, you can also recover it on your new device using Restore purchases. If you play without an account, your progress stays on the device and cannot be transferred.